


Absence Makes the Heart Grow Fonder

by Oceans_Away



Series: Lenector Weekend 2020 [2]
Category: Castlevania (Cartoon), 悪魔城ドラキュラ | Castlevania Series
Genre: Absence, Afterglow, Collars, Cuddling & Snuggling, F/M, Femdom, Forgiveness, Getting Back Together, Go down on your domme, Hector being a sad boy, Hector being always both sad and horny, Introspection, LenectorWeekend2020, Light Dom/sub, Memories, Morana is the best, Oral Sex, Pets, Reunion Sex, Reunions, Turns out he's actually very good at sex, collaring, good doggo, soft, starlight
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-27
Updated: 2020-11-28
Packaged: 2021-03-10 03:48:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 15,632
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27747751
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Oceans_Away/pseuds/Oceans_Away
Summary: After the ring enslaves Hector, he retreats from Lenore, throwing himself into his work and acting coldly in her company. But when she goes travelling, he finds being without her much harder than he expected. Maybe he wants more than he'd let himself admit...Yeah, yeah, I'm idealising their relationship or whatever, LET ME FEEL MY FEELINGS.Written forLenector Weekend 2020, organised by the wonderfulBakedTofu. Day 2 and 3: Pets and Starlight.[Rated mature, but explicit sex in Chapter 7.]Song:Epitaph for Boletaria, Alex Roe, used as The Fourth Sister/Lenore's Theme by MaxtheFan.
Relationships: Hector/Lenore (Castlevania)
Series: Lenector Weekend 2020 [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2029348
Comments: 10
Kudos: 28





	1. Thirteen Days

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hector reflects on Lenore's absence and the last time he saw her.

Frost wrote long, lonely letters in a forgotten language over the smooth surface of the frozen lake. Hector curled up on the deep sill of his bedroom window and let his eyes wander over the inscription, thinking dimly about writing letters, about sending messages in general, having your meaning be understood and expressed.

Lenore had been gone for thirteen days.

The window glass was cold. The winter sighed under Hector’s shirt, running a cool, soft hand up his arm, over his shoulder, along his jaw, down his chest and abs. He huffed out and shifted in his seat. He hugged his body and dropped his head back against the timber frame. 

He closed his eyes.

_ “Nun’s Delight.” _

The last time he and Lenore had spoken swam into his mind. She visited his house every night for dinner, bringing hot food from the castle kitchens, the rich scent of meat and fruit smudging into her jasmine and wine perfume. 

They were sitting opposite each other in his plain kitchen, a cosy, serviceable room, with a few dried herbs hung from the beams and refreshing the close air, and a large stove warming the house. The out-building Lenore had selected for him was on the South side of the peak on which the grand castle stood, the castle's arcing walls shielding Hector’s new home from the brusque winds. It was simple and small, but well-furnished, clean, and crisp with new plaster, laid with woven rugs and silk pillows and heavy, white furs. 

Lenore took an elegant sip from her wine glass, the point of her red tongue skimming the rim. 

“Nun’s Delight?” Hector echoed her, elbows leaned on the table, as he chased a sliver of carrot around his plate with a long-tined fork.

“That’s what I said.” Lenore smirked, a glimmer of impish glee in her pomegranate pink eyes. 

Hector raised an eyebrow.

“Apparently it’s been called that for years, the brewer said.” She spotted a drop of cranberry juice on her thumb and sucked it clean with a light smack of her lips. “A long-standing family tradition from a time beyond memory, when some abbess or other used to order cartloads of the stuff for Easter.”

Hector cocked his head, watching the way enjoyment bejewelled Lenore’s face, as she told him this mundane story about a beloved Styrian beer with a silly name. How could she be so blithe? She acted like nothing happened. Like he wasn’t wearing a ring that would rip him to shreds if he made a wrong step. 

“Anyway,” she continued, “so that’s why the brewer was so livid when the Church told him he had to change the name.”

“I see,” Hector droned. His fork clacked on his plate.

“So, guess what he changed it to.”

Hector didn’t say anything, he was still chasing that shred of carrot in lazy figure-eights.

Lenore plucked a blueberry from her plate and flicked it across the table. It bounced off Hector’s forehead. He glared at her, like a cat that had been poked on the nose.

“Guess what he changed it to,” she repeated.

Hector exhaled sharply. “I don’t know.”

Lenore leaned her chin on the heel of her hand and grinned, her neat, glinting fangs peeking over her autumn-coloured lips. “Bishop’s Finger.”

Hector pressed his lips together. “Bishop’s Finger.”

“Bishop’s Finger.”

Hector sucked on his tongue. “Nun’s Delight.”

“Nun’s Delight.”

The corners of Hector’s mouth strained, he fought to keep them in. “Bishop’s Finger.” He said slowly. “Nun’s Delight.”

Lenore’s grin spread dazzling. “Bishop’s Finger. Nun’s Delight.”

There was a beat. The stove creaked.

Hector burst into bounding laughter, deep and bubbling, rustling the brush of herbs overhead. Lenore leaned heavier on her hand and chuckled, her harp-pluck laughter ticking behind his sternum. Hector rocked back and coughed the rest of his mirth out, his cheeks flushing. He ran his hand through his hair and looked at her past the crook of his elbow. “I hate it when you make me laugh.”

Lenore sneaked the long fingernail of her pinky between her teeth. “I love it when I make you laugh.”

Hector faltered. He dropped his hand and cleared his throat.

“You have a pretty laugh,” Lenore said wistfully, her gaze a constant, drilling penetration. “A pretty laugh for a pretty boy.”

The corners of Hector’s mouth drooped again. He looked down, his fingers unstill on the table, the red and black braided ring catching the glow of the candle stubs. He moved his tongue in his mouth, trying to shove the heat out of his face. The room suddenly felt too close. He tried to think about the snowdrift on the path to his front door. He imagined crushing snow into his cheeks. 

“What are you chewing over?” Lenore’s voice lowered, like the crackle of melting wax.

Her voice always summoned all his truths to the surface. It made him want to talk about everything, to tell her everything. He could tell her any problem and she would snap her fingers and solve it. Right? What if the problem was “I hate you looking at me,” or “I hurt every time I want you,” or “I miss trusting you.” 

He flexed his hand, the ring pinching, and looked sternly out of the window to the nothingness of night. “I miss my dog.”

Lenore perked up, frowning slightly. It was the look that said  _ Keep talking, I’m listening.  _

“Cezar. He was a mess of a thing, stubby legs and a flat, wrinkled nose, missing ear, undead.” He clucked his tongue. “Loyal, energetic, liked having his chin scratched.”

“The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree,” Lenore murmured.

Their eyes met, hot, butane blue and cool, hibiscus red. 

“I have to go.” Lenore stood. She picked up the basket that she’d brought the food in and stepped along the table to stand beside him. He raised his eyes to her instinctively. She looked down at him with a sweet, unreadable expression. Her hair poured over her shoulders and crinkled on her brow, like rippling mead. His face was level with the soft rise of her breasts under her dark dress. He bit back a surge of memories. 

“Until tomorrow, then,” Hector said, somewhat resignedly.

“Actually, no.” Lenore swept away. 

His fingers extended towards her. He cursed them and balled his fist. “Oh?”

“Hmm.” She unhooked her cloak from a peg near the door and wrapped it around her, the fur dusting her cheek. “I’m going on a little jaunt. Carmilla left Wallachia in such a state, she wants it scouting out, before we start advancing East.”

Hector felt a prickle of concern on the back of his neck. “Are you going alone?”

“Yes.”

“Isn’t that a better job for Striga?”

Lenore laughed through her pert nose. “Send Striga and she’ll conquer the place before the rest of us have any fun.” He saw her eyes dance quickly over his face, the hardness of his jaw and the crease in his brow. She smiled, somewhere between sympathetic and smug. “I’ll be quite alright.”

Hector clenched his fist tighter and looked down. “I know.” He was well aware that Lenore could handle herself. 

“Will  _ you  _ be alright?”

He looked up again. She was standing between the door and the window, a painter’s stroke of starlight on the sharp angle of her cheekbone. Her eyes were wide. The question seemed to be genuine. But then, everything always seemed to be genuine with her. That was the problem.

“I’ll be fine,” he grunted.

The stove grumbled low behind him. His back tingled.

“Well,” Lenore said softly, turning and reaching for the door handle, “Take care.”

Hector nodded to the floor.

The door clicked open, a serpent of cold slipping into the kitchen.

Hector heard his chair creak and realised he’d moved to stand. Lenore halted and turned back, dainty ears pricking. She swivelled her wide eyes to him again. 

Hector stared at her a long moment, begging himself not to ask. He failed. “Will you be gone long?”

Lenore smiled. It impaled him. “Will you miss me?”

Hector crumpled back in his chair. “No,” he said bitterly. “You’re like my alp, coming to me every evening to renew my nightmares.” Well, not nightmares exactly, but he felt pretty nightmarish about how much he enjoyed them.

“Oh.” Lenore cocked an eyebrow, her eyes unchanging. 

Hector blinked. 

And she was on him. 

With a whisk of cool air she was looming over his chair, clutching his jaw in her stone-strong fingers, so hard that he thought his bone might crack. She forced his eyes to meet hers, so bright they made his head ache. She held his gaze a moment, her dark, elegant scent washing his senses. Then she nipped the end of his nose and smiled coldly. “Sweet dreams, then.”

The door banged. And he was alone.

Hector leaned his shoulder against the icy window to shock himself back to the present. He pulled his knees up under his chin, rubbed the back of his neck and scratched his scalp. 

He didn’t miss her.

He didn’t miss her.

He didn’t miss her.

But she had been gone for thirteen days.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Bishop's Finger, Nun's Delight" is a real joke from English brewery, Shepherd Neame. You couldn't make this shit up.


	2. Free Rein of the Castle

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hector explores the castle, generally being a sad, horny boy.

Free rein of the castle. It was perhaps the most surprising condition of his enslavement. After weeks in the dungeon, Hector had no great desire to be inside that soaring spider’s web of stone. It was bone-pale, like a crypt, the reaching, twisted spires driving into the sky, like stiletto blades. As beautiful as it was deadly. As vast and fascinating as it was entrapping. 

But he was bored. 

His workshop was under his house, an underground vault where the night creatures could be kept until they were called on. He spent his days surrounded by the clang of his hammer and the snarl and groan of restless beasts. No sunlight. No air. Usually, that didn’t bother him. He found his work absorbing. He’d swing his arm in a metronome beat and flow into the rhythmic rise and fall of the song of iron on iron. He could easily work for hours without pause, ploughing all his fear and grief and distasteful hope into the aches in his shoulders and the pumping of his blood, rolling out of him on the vibrations of his strikes.

The sun was setting early in the season, so Lenore had taken to coming to the workshop to collect him and walk with him around the grounds, telling him to breathe the scent of pine and ice, and wake up from that strange waking slumber his work put him into.  _ “I wonder, if I put a medallion in front of your face and swung it back and forth, if you’d sleepwalk then too. I wonder if it’s the work, or if you’re just generally susceptible to hypnosis.” _

Without her interruption, he had nothing to stop him. He worked late into the night. He ignored hunger and the burn in his muscles curdling into a hard, seizing ache. He let his throat dry out and his palms chap. 

After a particularly long set of grinding hours, Hector dragged himself back to his house.  _ His  _ house? Her house really. He dropped like a bundle of kindling into a chair at the kitchen table. There was a covered basket in front of him. He lethargically lifted the cloth. Inside was a hunk of cheese and half a loaf of bread. Cooked meals and fine spices had apparently left with Lenore.

He sighed and heaved himself up, grabbed a knife and a brown bottle of ale. He uncorked it with his teeth and swigged. He sawed chunks off the food with the knife and ate straight out of the basket, ignoring the crumbs scattering over his shirt. She’d be so indignant if she saw him eat like this. She who lived well. Who insisted he did too. A needling, bitter pleasure rose in his gut. He could have this small rebellion. An eddying wind bumped the door. Hector glanced up at the knocking. The image of her sweeping in hit his mind before he could guard against it, and then his imagination ran away with him...

_ She strode proudly to the table and slapped his hand sharply, sending the torn handful of bread flying. “What did I tell you, Hector? You’re a pet, not an animal.” She bundled his hair in her fist and pulled his head back with a sting and a throttling sensation, as his neck was stretched violently. She pushed a whole strawberry between his lips and sweet juice gushed over his tongue. She commanded him to suck and swallow. “It’s quite simple, Hector. Live well, or don’t live at all.” Her thumb stroked his lower lip and dragged it down, then ran over his chin, down his throat, and pressed to his larynx. Hard.  _

The pleasure in his gut turned less bitter. 

“Jesus fucking Christ, what’s wrong with you?” He shook his head violently and wiped the back of his hand across his brow. He filled his mouth with ale, washing away the remains of imaginary strawberry juice. He stood sharply, his strained back screeching almost as loudly as his chair. “Get out in the cold.”

He didn’t bother with a jacket. He threw himself into the harsh, winter night, with his shirt as his only shield. The wind lanced him instantly. He began to stride determinedly in a straight line, directly into the gusts. He let them slap his face. He let them tangle in his hair. He let them fling him into a tight embrace and grind against him with a rush of sighs.

This was not helping.

A whirl of wind pushed him forward, his boots crunching in the snow, sticking, so he almost toppled. As he steadied himself, the red glimmers of the castle’s tall, gilded windows caught his eye. He looked up at them yawning like the mouths of dragons, the castle walls and bridges like the interlocking, spiny wings and tails of the monolithic, ancient beasts. He hated that place. Good. He needed to remember hating. 

He drove himself harder into the wind, the hairs on his arms going brittle, his spine turning rigid. The darkness made the cold crueller, lashing his body in deep, painful strokes. He stumbled up the path to the towering castle and skidded along the bridge to the front courtyard. The mountains soared around him, hewn from white crystal in the moonlit snow, diminishing his hunched, solitary frame to little more than a money spider scuttling about in the palm of a queen.

He ignored the quizzical looks from the guards, as he was let into the castle. The huge door slammed behind him and cast the cold away. He looked about him. The castle’s grand entrance hall was a beehive complex of stairs and doorways, the windows towering in stained glass, tinted jet from the night and scattering dark butterflies around the walls. Lamps flickered in brackets on the wall, casting surprising brightness up the pale walls, as if the place was lit by some uncanny, underground sun. The air smelled clean.

He suddenly realised he didn’t have the faintest idea where to go. He’d never walked around the castle alone before. Lenore had always led him. His hand and neck tingled, warming, as if she was tugging on them. He rolled his shoulders. The feeling dimmed, but didn’t vanish. He huffed out and pushed himself into walking, taking long strides to try and keep himself from falling into the natural, easy rhythm of he and Lenore’s shared gait. He climbed spiral stairs, past rows of dark windows, the mountains flowing like milk under the deep sky. He padded down carpeted corridors, past rich paintings of bat-winged women writhing among stars, or dragging screaming men by their hair on hammer-hooved horses. Hector shook an aroused tingling out of his body again, muttering under his breath, “Damn it, why are you like this?”

He rounded a corner and walked down a passage lined with a tapestry showing owls wheeling through a forest in flashes of silver thread. At the end of the passage was a tall, arched door, slightly ajar, with an orange flicker winking through the slit. He nudged the door open and slipped inside. 

He found himself in a library. It was a smaller room than the vaulting interiors of the castle had made him expect, rafters in dark, carved wood criss-crossing like a rib cage low overhead. Shelves lined the round walls, surrounding him in a muted rainbow of dyed silk and leather book spines. A roaring hearth murmured to his left, a squat couch in front of it. Straight ahead, a small window looked out onto the very tips of the mountains. He must be at the top of one of the turrets. 

The comforting smell of paper cloaked him. He hugged his arms, feeling his shirt go a little crispy, as the damp, cold air from outside dried in the wash of heat. He prowled in a ring around the edge of the room, taking in the titles. They were various and intriguing; spellbooks, histories, collections of fine art and music, maps, philosophies, dramas, religious texts from all over the world, anatomies, allegories, and books banned by the Church. 

_ “There are ideas in here about physical presence in the world, the importance of soil and landscape and being.”  _ _ She’d smiled down at him, as he’d said it. She’d leaned close. She’d listened. _

He completed his turn about the room and settled by a shelf next to the fire, soaking up the heat, like a summer rose. The red light danced over the leather-binding, glimmering on gilded letters. He trailed his fingers down the spines. The ring caught his gaze. His eyes pricked. He set his jaw and tugged a book free, letting it fall open in his palm and staring resolutely down at the writing, injecting his attention into it, until his mind was empty again.

It read: Debate _ continues among philosophers over whether the state of vampirism should be classed as eternal life, or eternal death. Indeed, is this not the paradox of undeath itself? That it is simultaneously to be alive and dead and neither, both cold and hot, both flesh and stone? _

Lenore’s flushed face raced into Hector’s mind, the sweat beading on her brow, the glassy, wild look in her eyes, as he drove into her body, pressing his mouth to her skin. What about that was undead? She was more alive than anyone he had ever met. Living well. But then, how much had he really stirred her passion, if she had so easily enslaved him, without a second of remorse? She could be cold. She could be cold as stone.

He grit his teeth, shook the thought away, and zeroed in on the text again.

_ A minority of philosophers have classed undeath as a fluid state, in which one’s "humanity" decides whether one is at any moment alive or dead. When a vampire has compassion, they are alive. When a vampire is cruel and unfeeling, they are dead. This is, of course, nonsense. It comes from the school that is too dependent on Church teaching and it’s moral binaries. Eternal existence, in whatever state, cannot be subjected to a code based on the concept of afterlife as the only reward. _

That was true. Maybe he just couldn’t see her decision from that wider, vampire angle. He’d thought that in his time with Dracula, committing himself to the end of his own species, he’d strayed pretty far from old moral constraints. But, maybe these things had afterlives in mortal bodies that they didn’t in immortal ones.

No, come on, don’t make excuses for her. He read on.

_ This naturally raises the issue of relations with the human world. New vampires will frequently cling to their humanity, hoping to maintain relationships with old, still mortal friends. _

How old was Lenore? Didn’t matter. He kept reading.

_ These relationships inevitably end in pain. They are equivalent to if a human tried to form a meaningful connection with a horse, or a rat, or a dog. Diverting enough, but lacking in the true meeting of minds between two of their own kind. This pain for new vampires could be prevented, if we more strongly taught the philosophy of undeath as a transcendent, second existence, as removed from the mortal world as if the vampire had indeed ascended to Heaven. I propose that we end the debate between eternal life and eternal death, and instead describe vampirism as Afterlife. _

Afterlife. A higher form. A different world. Forever separate. Paradise barred. 

This had done nothing to get his mind off Lenore.

Hector snorted like a pug and flung the book onto the couch. 

“Ah, now, don’t throw our things around, or we shall have to make you sleep outside.” 

A voice like sharpening steel crept up the back of Hector’s neck. His stomach clenched and churned. He broke into a cold sweat. He wheeled around to face the door.

Carmilla entered silently, moving like blood flow in her slinking, scarlet dress, her icicle eyes skewering him like cooked meat. Hector stumbled back, his legs thudding against the arm of the couch, almost taking them out from under him. He thrust a hand out and steadied himself, forcing himself to meet her coldly furious gaze.

“What are you doing in here, Little Dog?” 


	3. Too Close for Comfort

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hector is threatened by Carmilla. Morana steps in and gives him new things to consider.
> 
> [CW: Sexual threat and shaming.]

“What are you doing in here, Little Dog?” Carmilla asked, her voice somehow both stony and sing-song.

“Don’t call me that,” Hector said through his teeth.

Carmilla’s crimson mouth twisted into a sneer. “Lenore does.”

Hector scoffed. “Actually, Lenore calls me…” 

Her sneer intensified.

“Never mind.” He looked away, bile leaping in his throat.  _ Good Boy, Pet, Puppy, Dear One, Sweetheart, Pretty Boy, Clever Thing. Ugh. Don’t think about her. Stay in the room. Watch for danger. _

Carmilla took a few paces forward, a spindly snow leopard, all raw muscle and callous hunger. Every step closer to him spiked Hector’s pulse, his heart launched into a gallop, pummelling his stomach and kicking up nausea. He couldn’t look away from her, not in the unwilling fascination he had for Lenore, but in the way a hare couldn’t not look at a fox. If he moved his eyes from her, if he so much as blinked, she could pounce and end him. Snap his neck. Tear out his jugular. Pierce his kidneys. Each part of his body he imagined her attacking iced. 

“I’ll ask again,” Carmilla said imperiously, “What are you doing in here?”

Hector scrabbled behind him and gripped the edge of the couch, grounding himself in the clench of his fist. “I have free rein of the castle.”

“Yes, but you mercifully haven’t been using it.” Carmilla dragged her needle claws through the ends of her knife-straight hair. “I’m not sure I like knowing you could be lurking behind any corner.”

“The feeling’s mutual,” Hector said darkly.

Carmilla’s face hardened. “The difference is, I own this castle, and you are barely even furniture.”

Lenore's voice sounded in his head. “Your _ work is important to us, Hector. I know the others are a little cold towards you, but you’re doing excellently. You’re a real asset.” _

Carmilla shot a deriding laugh through her nose. “You know, it’s obvious when you’re thinking about her.” 

Hector frowned, his face heating, as the rest of his body stayed cold, shrinking back.

Her upper lip curled. “You go into a haze. It would be sweet, if it wasn’t, you know, sickening.” She prowled closer. "Poor, little forge master. All worked up over a woman who keeps him in a kennel. How humiliating."

Hector folded an arm across his middle. Nerves spilled a bitter taste onto his tongue.

Carmilla slithered forward again. She came to less than a foot from his body. Her breath was metallic and there was a streak of red just beneath her lower lip. She’d been feeding. His stomach heaved. He forced the feeling down, grasping the couch back, and leaned away. 

Carmilla leaned with him, her cut-diamond face leering close, like a ghost hovering over a sleeper. “What does she see in you?” 

Hector’s heart thumped. “I’m useful,” he answered hoarsely, “You all need a forge master.” He leaned on “all”, pushing Carmilla to acknowledge that she needed his work, that he was better alive and intact.

Carmilla tutted and wafted her taloned hand dismissively. “Oh, yes, yes. But what does she see in  _ you _ ?” Her spearing eyes roved slowly around his body. It felt like she was peeling off his skin. “Sometimes, I have the awful feeling that if you stopped being able to forge, she’d make us keep you.” Her hand lifted and her fingers unfurled like a waking spider. “Why? What else are you good for?”

Her question ended in a hiss. She licked her teeth, another puff of hot, gory breath curling into Hector’s nose. His nausea reeled. The points of her fingernails touched to the dip where his throat met his collar. She dragged them down his torso. The sharp scrape turned all the hairs on his body to pins. His breath snagged. His throat closed. His pulse pounded in his ears. He could feel the blood in his wrists. 

“I mean, we all know what she uses you for, obviously.” Carmilla’s fingernails trailed to his abdomen. 

Lenore's voice came to him again. “I’m _ not going to force you, Hector. Where’s the fun in that? If you don’t want sex, then neither do I. I told you, I like you.” _

“But, really?” Carmilla’s sharp nose wrinkled, looking at his body with profound, haughty disgust. “It’s virtually bestiality.” Her claws skated down over his fly. 

Hector’s body went tighter than a bowstring. He buckled backwards and nearly toppled onto the couch. Carmilla grinned like an angler fish and snatched his shirt front with her other hand. He tried to lean back from her, his heart in his mouth, his breath raw. He tried to stay calm, but he was barraged by a ream of frightening images of what might be coming any second, dizzying his sense and choking his instincts.

“Carmilla, stop this!” he barked. Or, at least, he tried to. It came out half as a whimper.

Carmilla laughed. She threw her head back and exposed her teeth, the tips of her fangs still pink from feeding. Her laughter sent shards of broken glass into the air, scratching Hector’s skin and stinging his eyes. The memory of her beating him pounced on his mind, his body bitten by cold, as it hit the ground, her smile maniacal and her eyes ablaze, as her fists rained down on him. He choked on a gasp. He wriggled like a salmon. 

She wrenched him by his shirt to her body, clutching his crotch with a bolt of uncomfortable pressure, batting him with the stench of blood. She grinned with unhinged glee. The firelight beset her face with red shadows, demonic and grotesque.

“Perhaps it’s time I found out the appeal for myself,” she hissed.

His heart hammered fit to burst, his cock thudded disconcertingly, his breath came rapid and panicked. “Carmilla… Please, I…”

“Carmilla.” A firm, authoritative voice cut into the room.

Carmilla took a step back from Hector, releasing him. He heaved for air, his body buckling. He sank to perch on the arm of the couch, gripping the sides. 

Morana stepped briskly into the library, her impassive, opal blue eyes fixed on Carmilla. “Playing with toys that aren’t yours, Sister?”

Carmilla yapped a harsh laugh and tossed her hair. “We all wear the rings, don’t we?”

Morana smiled a feline smile. “You know perfectly well that was a special privilege from Lenore. But the boy is hers, and she did ask us to let him alone in her absence.”

Hector’s eyes shot to Morana.  _ She did? _

_ “Will you be alright?” _

Carmilla groaned and rolled her eyes. “Lenore’s too soft on him.”

“No softer than you are on your fine dresses or your jewels.” Morana shrugged her golden wrap around her shoulders. “How would you feel if you went away for a few days, and when you came back Lenore had gone into your wardrobe and worn all your clothes and snagged the fabric?”

Carmilla tutted and pursed her dark lips. 

“Come on,” Morana smirked, “Don’t pull a face.”

Carmilla pulled more of a face, but sauntered away from Hector, without a backward glance at him. She passed Morana with a mocking expression, and vanished into the corridor. The library door slammed.

Hector sighed, relief loosening his joints. He raised a trembling hand to his throat and massaged it lightly, trying to ease his airways back open. He took deep, shaking breaths, each one washing the stark, searing memory of Carmilla’s old attacks paler. He heard a rustle of fabric. He looked up and saw Morana had taken a few steps further into the room. She maintained a comfortable distance.

“Do you need something to drink?” she asked levelly.

Hector’s eyebrows drifted up in surprise. He shook his head. He tried to say something, but he was still getting his voice back. He gulped. His body felt weak and tenderised.

“Your blood smells of panic,” Morana said plainly.

Hector cleared his throat and nodded.

“There is no need.”

Hector managed an unconvinced chuckle.

“I mean it.” Morana walked around him in a wide birth. She held herself like a professor entering a lecture theatre. She came to the other side of the couch and sat, relaxing back onto the cushions. 

Hector turned, sliding to sit properly on the arm of the couch. The fire turned Morana’s skin the colour of nectarines. 

She hummed in pleasure at the warmth of the hearth, her narrow eyes briefly closing, then she casually picked up the book he’d tossed aside. “Ah, I find Albescu a little blunt, but he’s got some truly intriguing theories.”

Hector nodded. He watched her face, still as a lake, but with none of the iciness of Carmilla. She looked fluid, calm water, but water all the same. 

Morana kept leafing through the book, one foot kicking over the other. “Did you like it?”

Hector twisted his fingers together. “I… I didn’t really give it a fair chance.” He looked into the fire, red as Lenore’s hair. “Mind on other things.”

Morana closed the book softly and laid it beside her. “Well, when your mind is calmer, you must read it again. And also Navuluri. They would suit you, I think.”

Hector’s brow creased. “Why are you being nice to me?”

Morana’s blue jay gaze raised to him with a twinkle of amusement. “Lenore mentioned you could be blunt like that. Maybe you were right in selecting Albescu.”

Hector blushed. He looked down. “Sorry.”

“Don’t apologise.” Morana’s rolling voice was like the slow strum of a guitar, welcoming, pleasant. “You’re an artist, an artist should ask questions.” She spread her arm along the arm of the couch beside her and put her chin out to catch the heat of the fire again. “I’m being like this with you because I see no mileage in antagonising you. I get no pleasure from it.” She flicked her eyes to him. “And because Lenore spoke to me before she left.”

Hector’s heart somersaulted. “What did she say?” he asked, in a too-eager tone. 

Morana smiled knowingly.

He blushed again, irritated with himself. 

She brushed a crinkle out of her skirts over her lap and spoke with a note of affectionate amusement. “She said, ‘Morana, you’re the only one here I feel I can really trust to make sure Hector’s safe. Striga doesn’t trust him and Carmilla is beastly to him every chance she gets. I don’t know how long I’ll be gone and I want him to stay well-fed and cared for, while I’m away. Can you keep an eye on him for me?’ So I said ‘I suppose, as long as you water my peace lilies next time I’m travelling.’ And she said, ‘And no telling him he’s the same as a peace lily, he’s my good boy.’ So, I suppose I fucked up there.” She smirked sidelong at him.

Hector smiled back, in spite of himself. Morana had the air of a teacher who actually liked students. It smoothed the spikes of fear and nausea in his body. He let his shoulders drop and looked into the prance of the flames. So, Lenore had told them all to leave him alone while she was away. She had appointed Morana his guardian. He tried to be indignant, to tell himself that she was acting like he was a dog that needed feeding while it was locked in the house. But he couldn’t quite manage it. Underneath everything, he was touched.

“What was on your mind, that interrupted your philosophical reading?” Morana asked casually.

Hector prickled and let out an awkward laugh. “Oh, you know, my magical enslavement, the constant cycle of misplaced trust and betrayal I seem to be trapped in, years of attracting cruelty and indifference, crippling loneliness and stalking doubt. The usual, human nonsense.”

“That does sound like human nonsense, how very dull.” Morana chuckled.

They exchanged a warm glance, flickering orange painting the rim of her cool, blue irises.

She cocked her head in mock consideration. “Wouldn’t it be nice if a group of very powerful, very smart vampire sisters took over the human world and made everything easy for you all, so you didn’t have to have all that nonsense running about in your heads? Think how much reading you would get done then.”

Hector smiled hesitantly. “Imagine.”

“And all you’d have to do is be good pets and admit to yourselves that it’s all you really want.” Her gaze levelled on him and stilled. “Stop hating yourselves for it.”

Hector faltered. His face burned so hot, he worried for a moment it might be brighter than the fire. His tongue trembled, as he tried to keep the playful tone. “Is that all?”

“That’s all.” The corner of Morana’s mouth lifted higher. Her low voice husked melodically. “Imagine.”

Her gaze pressed into him. He withstood it as long as he could, then broke it, looking at his hands. He shuffled his feet on the rug. He released a breath he hadn’t known he was holding.

Shadow flurried along the floor, as Morana stood. He looked up at her. 

“Come with me,” she said mildly, and began to walk with her relaxed precision out of the library. 

Hector followed. 

She led him out of the turret and through another labyrinth of corridors, these all smaller and warmer than the impressive halls lower down in the castle. Lamplight gilded the air and the pale stone and the coil of Morana’s hair bobbing in front of him. Her steps were long and purposeful, he almost struggled to keep up. He wanted to ask where they were going, but he kept not opening his mouth. His body fell all too easily into the questionless rhythm of being led around this place. He rubbed his neck absent-mindedly.

_ “Come on, walkies.” _

Eventually, they stopped at a squat, arched door in dark red wood. Morana slipped a ring of keys from her pocket and unlocked the door with a dainty copper key. It clicked lightly. She opened the door. 

The scent of jasmine and wine. It cantered over Hector and brought his body whirring to life. He stifled a sigh. “Lenore’s room,” he said without thinking.

“Well guessed,” Morana replied. She stepped to the side to leave the doorway clear and held her hand out in an inviting gesture. “Why don’t you sleep in here, until Lenore gets back?”

Hector frowned. “Sleep in here?”

“Yes.” Morana hooked the copper key with her long forefinger and began to jimmy it off the ring. “Your house has no locks, but this room does, so it will feel a little more secure. And besides, if you do want to do some more exploring in the castle, you can walk straight out of bed into it from here and avoid tramping about in the snow in nothing but your shirt, like a vagabond.” She held the key out to him.

Hector was stunned. He blinked at the key. A dignified, sensible voice in his mind said  _ “Thank you for the offer, but I would much rather stay in my own space.” _ The rest of his mind said  _ “Christ, Lenore’s perfume smells good.” _ Out loud, he said nothing, and held out his hand.

Morana dropped the key into it. 

His fingers closed around the key, delicate and warm. 

“Sweet dreams, Forge Master.”

Morana inclined her head graciously. Hector gave a jerky, startled half bow. She chuckled warmly and swept away down the corridor and out of sight.

_“Sweet dreams.”_


	4. Lenore’s Room

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hector explores Lenore's room, and makes a discovery.

Hector stood on the threshold to Lenore’s bedroom for a very long time. Her fragrance tormented him, tumbling through his senses and ripping holes of longing open in his heart. If he went inside, it would only intensify. But, God, did he want to go inside. Moonlight graced the room through a large window, veiled with a gossamer curtain. The same gossamer canopied her wide bed, spread with sapphire silk and piled with fat cushions in cobalt and turquoise. He’d imagined what her bed would look like countless times. It was even more inviting than he’d expected. 

A rug with an abstract pattern like racing hounds spread across the middle of the floor, under low, curving rafters and a hanging antler chandelier. A dressing table sat by a marble hearth, and a tall, wide wardrobe was fitted against the wall. Hanging over the hearth was a large portrait of a red-haired young woman pruning roses in a brightly lit greenhouse, while in the background three more women, one silver-haired and slender, one large with a black mane, and one prim and ruffed, stood together by another rose bush and chatted. A greyhound padded around the pruner’s dark blue skirts, nuzzling her leg. She had a serene smile on her face, her ruby eyes bright and happy. Hector stared up at the painted Lenore, at the gentle way her fingers teased the flowers, at the tilt of her hip to lean into the hound’s attentions. He had no idea how long he had been imagining taking the dog’s place when he caught himself doing it; thinking about sitting at her feet and leaning his cheek against her soft thigh, as she hummed to herself and dropped roses down for him to smell, tickling under his chin with the petals and giggling, as he grumbled at her.

The image of her looking down merrily at him melted into the villainous delight, as she’d announced ruthlessly to him shaking on his knees,  “I’ve done what you always wanted. I’ve made you into my pet.”

What he always wanted.

_ “Stop hating yourselves for it.” _

How? How was he supposed to not hate himself every time he wanted her? She had manipulated him, mocked him, enslaved him, made him live the rest of his life in fear of a spell turning him inside out if he showed any sign of resistance. He should hate her. He did hate her. And so he should hate any part of himself that said otherwise. 

Her perfume smelled so damn good.

He drifted into the room and allowed it to envelop him.

He was only human, after all. Humans were base and weak and they let desire burn their judgement and their goodness to ashes. He was just hating what he hated in all of his kind. What the vampires hated. Except for Lenore, who called him good, and pretty, and...

_ “What does she see in you?”  _ Carmilla’s disgusted voice jabbed the back of his brain. He turned cold again. 

He quickly closed the door and locked it, testing it multiple times to make sure it was secure. When he was satisfied, he pulled off his boots and walked deeper into the room. Curiosity pulled him to the dressing table. He dropped to the padded stool and glanced around the paraphernalia on display. An antler comb, engraved elaborately with stags and does, one long, bronze hair winding through the teeth. A crystal bottle of perfume. A square marquetry box, left open and showing glittering silver and sapphire jewellery. A few sheets of paper and a quill and inkpot. A tiny vase with a few glass bluebells twinkling in it. Everything was so refined, so elegant. 

He tentatively picked up the perfume bottle, holding it like an eggshell, his pulse picking up at the fear he would mar any of her fine, precious things with his coarse, man’s touch. He carefully removed the stopper and held it to his nose. His senses spun. His cock pulsed. That startled him and he quickly put the bottle back. He was about to get up from the table, when he noticed one of the draws was an inch open, something gleaming inside. Softly, trying not to make a sound, feeling like a thief, he slid the drawer open wider.

His blood rushed.

Carefully coiled in the drawer, on a black, velvet pillow, was his collar and lead.

His collar? No, the collar she’d made him wear.

No. His collar.

He stared at it. He peered into the drawer, looking for what other jumble of things she was storing it with. Nothing. The drawer was entirely devoted to the collar, bedded on velvet and carefully, meticulously arranged. His fingers moved towards it. He curled them back. He kept staring. It looked like a sleeping snake. His neck tingled and the tingle trickled down his spine and pooled in his abdomen.

She brought him special meals every night. She called him sweet names. She told him she would be gone and left him protected. She spoke softly about him when he couldn’t hear her. She kept his plain, leather collar in more prestige than her rich jewellery strewn tangled in the hanging-open box. 

He ached. 

He looked up to the portrait again. The greyhound snuggled into Lenore’s side, safe and cosseted and surrounded by rosy warmth. 

He suddenly felt violently hollow. A great tear opened in his centre and snarled, threatening to consume him, to gnaw the flesh off his bones. He felt stripped and hewn apart and horribly, cavernously alone. Wallachia was a month’s trudge away and a month’s trudge back, and God knew how long she would need to inspect the whole of that vast region. All the time she had been here, he had distanced himself from her, refused her touch, spurned her sweetness, wallowed in self-pity and wounded pride. Now she was gone and it would be seasons before he could kiss her, or curl into her arms, or feel the way she twisted with pleasure under his tongue. He felt like a rowboat lost in a storm, like a horse without its rider, like a starling without its flock, unmoored and vulnerable and confused. He knew he should hate her. But he was so tired of trying. 

He leaned heavily on his elbows with a thick groan and buried his face in his hands. Everything in his life had always been less than he’d hoped. Family, friends, masters, he’d lost them all to greater loves or changing desires, he’d never been enough. And then her. The ring coiled tight on his finger. The ring she’d given him to keep him with her, to make it impossible for him to leave, impossible for them to be apart. He thought about how she held his hand and bit his lip and pulled his hair. He thought about how she closed her legs around him. He thought about the clench of her little, lily petal hand on his lead. No one had ever wanted him like that before. She possessed him. She treasured him. He had a place inside her, unlike anything he’d ever known. 

_ “Will you miss me?” _

Did she miss him? She hadn’t used the lead since the ring had taken its place, yet the drawer was open. Did she sit at this table and run her fingers along the leather and think about him? He imagined her teasing the buckle with her deft fingertips and smiling up at the greyhound in the painting. It filled him with a strange, shy joy. Then the presumption of it needled him and he shrank in embarrassment.

He groaned deeper into his hands. “You’re a mess.” He rubbed his eyes, as he lowered his hands, glimpsing his drawn face in the mirror. “Get some sleep.” He shut the drawer firmly, got up, and faced the bed.

He realised he didn’t have his nightshirt. 

He couldn’t just sleep in his clothes. This was Lenore’s bed. He couldn’t drag the forge and the snow and the breadcrumbs all over that fine silk. But… naked? That felt disrespectful too. Everything felt so fucking disrespectful. He felt like a ragamuffin who’d broken into a princess’ palace. 

Despite that, the bed stretched before him invitingly. The ache from his long hours of work and the sting in his nerves from the sickening overdose of adrenaline in the library returned in full force to his body. His legs turned weak and his head swam. The scent in the room was comforting and dreamy. He had to lie down, before he collapsed. He pulled off his clothes and slid into the bed, trying not to dislodge the neatly arranged sheets. The silk was cool and crisp. He let out a deep, needy sigh and dissolved into the incredible softness of its embrace. His head met the pillow, his temples and his scalp flooding with relaxation. He rubbed his face on the pillow, like a kitten, and snaked his body between the sheets, so the soothing stroke embalmed him. All his muscles unknotted and liquified. He pooled in the sheets, like rainfall. As he floated to the edge of sleep, his arm drew up and hugged the pillow beside him close against his chest. Jasmine and wine. Lenore lay tucked close to his body, kissing his forehead and stroking his skin with her silken touch. 

He was in her bed. 

Her bed.

_ “Go to sleep, now. There’s a good boy.” _


	5. Held

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hector has a nightmare, and gives into temptation.

Cold and pain and ringing, resounding fear. 

Hector curled into a daggering bed of snow and covered his head with his arms and surrendered, sobbing, to the hail of blows raining down on him. 

“Worthless wretch!” Carmilla snarled, “We only had you to be a forge master. Pathetic how you keep crawling to us for affection. We are vampires and you are nothing.” She gripped him by the roots of his hair and wrenched his head up and forced him to meet her maniacal, ice blue gaze. Her red mouth contorted in her lightning white face, as she hissed her hatred at him. She spat in his eye. She kicked him in the gut. He was cast onto his back, crying out. 

“Dracula! Master!”

A great shadow moved over him and away.

“Isaac!”

“Traitor.” His friend’s wounded growl rolled through him and vanished.

Flames. Leaping, ravaging flames. Burning them all alive. Screams. Roars. Lost in the roar of fire.

“That's right, he burned his family alive.” Carmilla’s drawl echoing through stone halls.

“Impressive.” Morana’s voice.

“Perhaps he is like us.” Striga’s brash chuckle. “What do you think, Lenore?”

He strained his ears, but the fourth voice was drowned in the guttural screeching of night creatures.

“Perfect!” Carmilla cackled. “You’ve made a whole army! Now, at last, we don’t need you anymore. Thank God!”

Hector’s heels skidded, as Carmilla advanced, her red dress and white hair streaming in the howling blizzard. He reeled, his stomach lurching, as he felt the ground crack beneath him. He was standing at the edge of a cliff.

He threw his hands up, pushing at the gales sweeping Carmilla towards him. “I can keep helping. I can be of use. Please.”

“You are not of use. You are not of value.”

“Please!” His throat burned. “Don’t!”

“I can finally be rid of you. The world can be rid of you.”

“Just let me go. I’ll go back into hiding. You’ll never see me again.” He took another step back, reeled again, gasped and jarred his joints. He was aching all over with bruises. He could taste his blood in his mouth.

“No.” She surged forward, one with the blizzard. “Even knowing you’re alive somewhere eats at me. You’re like a plague. I want you dead.”

“Please…”

“Everybody wants you dead.”

“Please!”

She leaped, claws out, fangs flashing. He stumbled backwards with a wail of terror.

He fell into darkness.

He crashed onto the mattress of Lenore’s bed and woke in a scrambling, sweating panic. He grasped at the tangled sheets around him and cast them off wildly. As the cool air rushed him, he was shocked fully back to consciousness. He snatched his breath, clutching his chest and taking large, deliberate gulps.

His breathing slowly levelled, rasping a little. His skin prickled with cold. He drew his knees up and hugged his body. The nightmare crept around the outskirts of his mind, nicking him like thorns. He glanced towards the window. The moon was still high, glimmering in a void of darkness.

He groaned and rubbed his temples. “It was just a dream. Go back to sleep.” 

He shivered. He forced himself to feel the cold a little longer, pushing against the nightmare. He ached under his eyes and in his chest. He wiped the clammy slick from his palms and gathered the bed covers back around him. He lay gingerly on his side, facing away from the window and the plummeting darkness of night.

The castle was ghostly silent. The vampires seemed to move incorporeally, and all the wooden creaking and whistle of wind of his usual sleeping space was hushed by the dense walls and heavy drapery of the castle. The silence gave him nothing to anchor his mind to. It kept drifting back to the nightmare, some hideous, gigantic Carmilla bearing down on him every time he closed his eyes. 

He rolled onto his front, buried his face in the pillow, and stuffed it around his ears, hoping the roar of blood would drown her out. It only morphed into the roar of the blizzard, and then he was falling again. 

He rolled roughly onto his back and clutched his hair, growling under his breath at the swirl of gossamer above him. “You’re not a child. Go. To. Sleep.”

_ “Is the bed comfortable?” _

His first night in the newly refurbished outbuilding drifted behind his eyes, overlaying the echoes of the nightmare. He clung to it, the soft candlelight on Lenore’s hair warming him after the icy stabs of the dream. 

He sat on the edge of the bed, bouncing slightly to test the mattress.

“Is the bed comfortable?” she asked politely.

“If I say yes, will you make a suggestive comment?” he jabbed.

“Maybe.” Her lips curled a little.

“It’s fine,” he said bluntly.

“Tell me if it isn’t,” she instructed, “I’ll have it changed.”

Hector nodded stiffly. The bed was wide and clean, the linen smelled of rosemary. Even with the mattress, sleeping in the cell had wrecked his back. He wanted so much to resent the comfortable surroundings, but he could feel his body shaping gladly to them before even lying down.

Lenore watched his fingers flex awkwardly on the edge of the bed. She seemed to think for a moment, then walked carefully to the bed and sat beside him, a good foot away. He felt the mattress sink, tipping him towards her.

“I wanted a big bed for the two of us. That night was good, wasn’t it?” She wasn’t looking at him, she spoke slightly wistfully, her eyes roving over the woodgrain on the walls.

Hector heated and his intestines knotted. “Up to a point.”

She sighed resignedly. “But it was good because we both wanted it.” She tilted a fraction, her hair swishing towards him and flicking her scent under his nose. “I know this isn’t always easy for you, but when you know what you want, you’re quite…” She glanced up at him with a small smile. “Well, you’re quite something.”

Hector’s heart constricted.

Her gaze was somewhere between mocking and mournful. She sighed with more of a puff and leaned back on her palms, opening her body, sinking the mattress again. “Anyway, I’m not going to force you, Hector. Where’s the fun in that? If you don’t want sex, then neither do I.” She showed him her teeth, her eyes glittering merrily. “I told you, I like you.”

He crinkled the bedsheets in his fists. He hesitated. He spoke very quietly to the floor. “If you liked me, you had me. You didn’t need to do what you did.”

She turned and fixed him with a steady glare. “Yes, I did. You don’t understand everything, Hector.”

He frowned, his voice raising a touch. “You could have explained.”

She shrugged. “Possibly. I didn’t want to.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re my good boy.” She said it as if it was obvious. Her gaze glistened again, her mouth soft. “And I want my good boy to rest easy, to exercise his talents and fulfil his interests. Mummy has more on her plate. But that’s for her to worry about. Her good boy just has to wear his pretty ring, do the work he loves, lie in a big, comfortable bed, and let himself be happy.”

Hector raised his eyebrow. Something in the back of his mind told him that sounded nice. He ground his teeth and ignored it. “So you tricked me for my own good?” he asked wryly.

“I saved you, Pretty One.” She leaned to him and her look was serious. “I would again.”

Hector faltered. His pulse thrummed. He glanced at her lips, too close to his. She held his gaze too long, until he felt naked, until he felt ashamed. He couldn’t stop looking at her and the frame of the bed around her body. Images shuffled behind his eyes like cards, her falling backwards, her white fur cloak wilting from her shoulders and stroking her blossom-soft skin, her hair spilling over it like falling leaves on snow, her mouth in a sumptuous “O” as she sighed, the rim of lace ringing her thigh, her chest rising in a moan, her nipples kissing the candlelight. 

She looked impassively away and stood, the mattress bobbing back up. His thoughts shattered. He cleared his throat. 

She walked in her rhythmic patter to the door and turned. “Really, if you aren’t comfortable, just say the word.”

Hector opened his mouth, closed it, and nodded.

She rippled her fingers in a delicate wave and slipped from the room.

Hector groaned miserably and collapsed backwards onto the bed.

He stared up at the drift of gossamer above her bed, veiling the ceiling painted with silver constellations, as if he was looking up at the stars through mist. 

He sighed. “Why didn’t you just tell me what you were going to do?” In the crushing silence and the shrouding darkness, he finally whispered the thing that had been buzzing through his veins, like a plague of locusts. “I would have said yes.”

He hugged his body again. He felt so empty. Too little food. Too little rest. Too little warmth. Too little laughter. Too little encouragement. Too little direction. The emptiness travelled from his core up to his throat. His shoulders and his neck suddenly felt disembodyingly light, as if he was coming apart. He needed weight. He needed to be held. 

He moved without thinking.

He rolled hurriedly out of the bed and tripped to the dressing table. He pulled open the top drawer with a smooth, scuffing sound. The moonlight turned the coil of brown leather ruddy. He swallowed. His spine tingled. He trailed his fingers over the lead. He spiralled his touch from the loop handle round and round until he stroked the soft inside of the collar. A shudder went through his body. It wasn’t unpleasant. His hand trembling a little, he picked up the collar and lead. They were heavier than he remembered, solid in his hands, comfortingly material, present, real. He bent to the mirror. He tentatively unfastened the collar and fitted it around his neck. The buckle slotted easily into place. The leather was supple and cushioned, cosy more than tight. It sat on him, like a bird sits on a pedlar’s shoulder, companionable and pretty. 

_ Pretty.  _

He widened his tired eyes and took in his reflection. The moonlight softened the harsh angles of his face and torso. It smoothed the creases of his work-strained muscles, brightened his eyes, and rippled down his hair. The ribbons of shadow threading through the moonbeams nestled around the collar, making it the focal point of his body, a pin drawing all the lines and furrows and sculpts of his form into alignment. He blushed. It tinted his face dusky rose, like the flowers in the portrait. He raised his hand and brushed his hair back off his face. As the dark veil lifted, the full sweetness of his youthful, pensive face came into view, the collar cupping his visage, like affectionate hands. The lead fell down the centre of his bare chest, a neat pathway from his jaw to the crest of iron grey hair over his cock. He stared at his reflection as he had never seen himself before. Was this how she saw him? Was it how he wanted her to see him?

He scratched behind his ear and pulled his face away. He padded back to the bed and slipped back between the sheets. He tucked them close around him and settled on his side. His face tipped into the soft pillow and the lingering scent of Lenore’s perfume. The collar leaned on the jutting muscle in his neck and massaged it soft, like firm, caressing fingers. He felt for the end of the lead and wrapped it several times around his palm, until it felt like his hand was being held. He took a long, steadying breath, shuddering again. He closed his eyes. And waited. No nightmare came. He waited a little longer. 

And then he was in a greenhouse, surrounded by sunny, electric lamps and the scents of sugary roses and fresh succulents. Pale stars winked through the domed, glass ceiling. He leaned his cheek against a soft skirt and a padded thigh. He looked up into a smiling, beautiful face, glimmering in pink and yellow light.


	6. Pleasant Surprises

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lenore returns home and finds the sleeping Hector in her bed. What a pleasant surprise. And she has one for him too.

It had been a long journey home. Travelling as a cloud of bats was convenient, but it involved a lot of coordination, especially when carrying luggage. And the snow had made it pretty miserable. Lenore avoided her sisters, as she returned to the castle in the small hours of the night. She could hear their carousing voices somewhere and smiled warmly, but she was tired and wanted an early day. She would surprise them tomorrow. She’d brought Wallachian sweet bread.

She stepped into her room and put down her basket and her pack, unhooked her cloak and tossed it with a heavy  _ flump  _ over an armchair. The  _ flump  _ turned into a rustle.

She froze, eyes flitting about, lips drawing back over her fangs. Her nostrils flared. She smelled iron and salt and rosemary. 

_ Hector? _

Her eyes were sharpened by the dark. Looking over to the bed, she saw the mound in the sheets, rising and falling rhythmically. She frowned quizzically. She crept to the bed. Hector lay curled on his side, like a grey fox, his eyes moving under the lids and his hair strewn like knotted cotton over the silk pillow. Around his neck was the collar, the lead coiled around his hand and clutched to his heart. She put a hand to a tickle in her belly. She eyed the tawny skin of his exposed shoulders and chest. She raised an eyebrow. She carefully pinched the bedsheet between finger and thumb and lifted it.

“Oh my.”

He was naked.

Lenore felt a flutter of bemused pleasure. What on earth was he doing? Well, whatever it was, she had no complaints so far. She lowered herself carefully onto the bed and slid to sit beside his scrunched torso. His face was smooth and untroubled. That perpetual crease in his brow was sweet, but it was nice to see him so peaceful. A lock of hair dropped down and teased his nose. He sniffed and twitched. She stifled a giggle. She carefully brushed the hair from his face.

He stirred. His breath faltered, then drew in deep and sighed out. His face wriggled about. He screwed his eyes shut. He opened them, slowly.

Watching the realisation gradually dawn on his face was better than watching a play. As he first slipped from sleep, he looked foggy and dreamy, his jaw and his brow soft. Then his eyes opened a little wider and saw the silk bedding. Then wider again on her hip. Then very wide.

He sucked in a gasp and scrabbled to sit, realised he was naked, balked, grabbed the sheets around him, tangled his hand in the lead, realised he was wearing the lead, and balked again. His knees snapped up to his chest and he stared at Lenore, like a grouse stares at a longbowman. It really was too wonderful. Artists could paint their masterworks in the colours of his blushes.

Lenore slinked to recline on the bed, sticking her elbow on a pile of cushions and propping her head up on her hand. She gave Hector her most debonair grin. “So, when I asked you if you would miss me and you said ‘no’, that was…?”

Hector pressed his lips together, his shoulders hunching to shadow the collar. He began to try to free his hand from the lead, but his poor, human eyes couldn’t see the knot in the darkness. He yanked it and coughed. Lenore chuckled, warming deeply after the cold journey. She reached out and took his hand, feeling tension shoot up his arm at her touch. She paused, letting him settle, then drew his hand to her and deftly freed it from the leather wrapping. The lead fell onto the bed, the buckle clinking. She closed his hand in both of hers. He always had such warm hands, from the forge, from his human heartbeat. She massaged the marks of the wrapping out of his flesh. She could feel his pulse, quick and nervous, thrumming against her fingertips.

“I-I’m sorry,” he stammered, “I know I shouldn’t be here, I…”

“Hush.” She flashed her eyes to him, steady and comforting. “You’re fine.” 

She released him from her gaze and went back to looking at his hand, crooked and lightly bruised from the hammer. He’d clearly been working too hard. 

“Although, I can’t help but be curious,” she added.

Hector shifted under the sheets, she felt him move in the tug of the silk. “I…” His deep voice was hoarse and hesitant. “There was…” His sharp jaw hardened. “... an incident. With Carmilla.”

Lenore felt nettles on the back of her neck. “An incident?”

“She…” He shifted again. He folded his free arm across his torso and rubbed his elbow. His voice turned terse. “She threatened me. I was in the library and she didn’t like me being there.”

“What did she do?”

Hector huffed out and looked away. Lenore caught his eyes sternly, pressing him with her gaze. He continued flatly. “She was Carmilla. She called me some names and pushed me about a bit.”

It was more than that, Lenore could smell her on him. Her tongue felt oddly tight. She scoured him with her eyes, checking for injury, for discomfort. He seemed alright. She shook out her ruffled shoulders. “That woman needs a hobby.”

Hector’s teeth peeked from his fine lips and a little light bounced in his blue eyes. “Is pushing me about not a hobby to you four?”

Lenore pursed her lips, but her eyes sparkled. “No, it’s a solemn duty. Anyway, Carmilla was Carmilla, and so naturally you’re in my bed and neatly collared?”

Hector’s biceps flexed, as he tightened his hold around his body. “She…” Another awkward search for words. “...unsettled me.”

Lenore looked into his eyes. They were such quiet eyes for such a noisy mind. She fastened his hand tighter between hers and ran her thumb over it gently. “I’ll talk to her.”

Hector perked up like a startled hare. “There’s no need.”

Lenore tutted sharply. “Of course there is, I don’t play with her things while she’s away.”

Hector chuckled bitterly through his nose. “Funny, that’s what Morana said.”

“Morana?”

“She stepped in.” This part of the story came easier. “She told me to sleep here, where there’s a lock. And…” He trailed off again. Lenore squeezed his hand unconsciously. He was strong for a human, she could feel the tautness of his tendons, but he was exquisitely fragile in her clasp. Hector sucked on his lip. His eyes raised very slowly to hers, the coldness she’d come to expect these past weeks thawed away and the attractive electricity that crackled around his irises returned. “I think she knew I needed to be here.”

The back of Lenore’s neck tingled. She used the darkness to hide the flicker in her expression. She raised her chin nonchalantly. “Oh?”

Their eyes locked. The warmth inching through Lenore quickened, prickling on her arms, making her stomach light. For Hector, she had been gone for a couple of weeks. For her, it had been half a season, as he’d shrank from her, pushed her away with his hurt glances and taciturn speech. Now, here he was, hopeful and soft and needing. It was like coming back to the castle had taken her back in time. She leaned closer to his alchemical elements scent. She watched him patiently, willing him to go on.

When he finally spoke again, his voice was low, but urgent, like the sound of a simmering, weighty rain cloud breaking over dry earth. It washed over her. It invigorated her. “Lenore, I’m tired. I’m so tired. I want to be angry with you. I want to hate you. I want to want nothing more than to be free from you. But it’s so exhausting fighting for that, when all my body does is come back to you. It’s magnetic. It's inevitable. It’s the rolling of seasons. It’s like all my life only happened to bring me to this place. I’ve been lost for so long, drifting between shallow tragedies and small betrayals. But here, with you, I feel like I actually know what I’m doing, and what for. I thought I had it with Dracula, but I fell from him so easily. I don’t miss him, I don’t regret him. You…” His hand curled into hers, interlacing their fingers. “You’re gone a matter of days and I can feel the lack of you like an infection under my skin. I thought I had to protect my freedom, or my dignity, or some other lie. But what am I preserving all that for if all I do with them is fade away? Without purpose, without cause? You make me feel like I exist. Like there was a reason for me. When I’m close to you, serving you, when I’m…” He ran his free fingers over the collar. “When I’m _this_ , I make sense.”

Lenore stayed quiet, his gruff, cantering words pouring through her. She wound her fingers into his and looked steadily into his eyes, bright as a magnesium flare, staring at her with vivid vulnerability. An ache she hadn’t realised was in her body floated from her. She felt exorcised. It left her with a burning clarity. She shifted closer to him on the bed, his heat spilling over her cool skin. She reached out and stroked her fingertips around the supple surface of the collar, the mould of it on his neck tactile and sweetly familiar. Her touch slid to the buckle at the back and up into his hair, thick and tousled, jostling in her fingers. 

“You have always made sense to me, Hector,” she said sincerely.

He let out a tightly held breath. His head dropped, their brows almost touching. Her hand slid deeper into this hair, cupping his skull protectively. His mouth was so close to hers that she felt the gusts of his words on her lips. “Lenore, I…”

A shrill whine interrupted him.

Hector’s head snapped back up and he frowned. “What was that?”

Lenore’s lips tingled in frustration. She popped them and shuffled upright. “Oh,” she hummed casually, “I was going to show you this tomorrow, but I suppose, since you’re here.”

She lethargically moved from the bed, feeling her skin snag on the tendrils of his heat. She walked over to the basket and cooed at it. 

Hector frowned after her, sitting up in the bed and finally letting his legs slide down, opening his body out. His blood had started to hum. He was curious, but impatient to have her close again. With her back to him, she scooped something into her arms from the basket, making affectionate tutting noises. 

Lenore turned. In her arms, she was cradling a pot-bellied, coal black pug, a gleam of bone exposed over half of his head and one of his stubby little legs. As the snuffling creature twisted in her arms and saw Hector, it erupted into high-pitched yapping, it’s little, pink tongue bouncing with rapid, overjoyed panting.

Hector’s heart leaped. “Cezar!”

The look on Hector’s face ripped a hearty smile and laugh out of Lenore, with a shock of pleasure. The pug squirmed in her arms desperately. She hastened back to the bed and dropped him onto the covers. He threw them into a mess, as he scrambled, still yapping, into Hector’s arms. Hector caught him and bundled him up, his face flushing peach-tan, starry sparks of mirth bursting in his eyes. Cezar’s misshapen flanks pumped alarmingly, as he clambered up Hector’s torso, licking his chin frantically. Lenore smirked and wrinkled her nose.

“Alright! Alright!” Hector laughed, “Down, Boy! Calm down!” He petted Cezar eagerly, rubbing his wrinkles and scruffing his ears, hugging him like a teddy bear, until the dog mellowed and snuggled into his arms, snorting and wheezing. Hector looked up into Lenore’s face with the wild delight of a child on his birthday. “How did you…? Why did…? But…”

Lenore held up a hand to hush him. She shrugged and looked away modestly, then glanced back at him with a smile. “You said you missed him. I figured, since I was going that way anyway, I might as well keep my eye out for an undead dog. There can’t be many of them around.”

The wonder in Hector’s eyes made her blood soar. “I can’t believe you!” His voice boomed with a health to it she hadn’t heard before. Cezar rolled ungainly over in his arms and he chuckled affectionately and hoisted him into a cradle, rubbing his bulbous belly to a chorus of snorts.

“He’s quite remarkable,” Lenore commented drily, “I’ve never encountered a creature that snores while he’s awake.” 

Hector laughed again. His laugh was like the chasing of deer in the wood, like the moment a falcon takes off, whipping the wind, vigorous, sanguine. It called to the hunt. His face was summery and his eyes were adoring, as he looked at her again. “You’re remarkable.” 

Lenore, much to her dismay, lost her words. His raw, innocent, heartfelt happiness whisked to her and stopped the floor beneath her feeling solid. She shrugged again, in a show of effortlessness, but really to cast the strange feeling from her body. She opened her mouth to speak.

Cezar hiccupped loudly and launched into another storm of giddy panting. He tumbled out of Hector’s arms and started to tussle with the sheets. Lenore bubbled with amusement. She leaned over and scooped him up, holding him firmly with her supernatural strength. He struggled fiercely, pushing at her chest with his skeletal foot and grumbling. 

“Now, now,” she cooed, “only one puppy allowed on the bed at once.” She threw a teasing glance to Hector. His blush was delicious. She set Cezar down on the hearth rug and waved her hand. A small flame leaped up and began to crackle away, the sound deeply satisfying after her flight in the snow. Cezar snuffled, scooted closer to the fire, and flopped, his snub nose landing on his paw and his one eerie eye blinking sleepily. Lenore patted him and turned back to the bed, dusting off her dress.

Hector looked smaller than he was in the large bed. The firelight tinted his dusky skin an even warmer, tastier tone. He’d finally relaxed his posture, lowering his legs. His chest opened, his nipples dark in the orange light. The bedsheets crested around the furrows at the base of his torso sculpting his hips. Lenore sucked on her tongue. She let her eyes rove over him, resting on the well of shadow where the collar lay. 

He bunched his shoulders, his shyness making the points of her ears hot. He cleared his throat. “I’m sorry, I should go.”

Aw, what good manners. She cocked an eyebrow and paced back to the bed. She leaked honey into her voice. “Go? You’re finally naked in my bed and you think I’m letting you slip away?”

She heard him swallow. Her stomach skipped. She turned her back to him, drawing her cascade of hair over her front. She thought gleefully of the collar, as her fingers danced down the lacing of her dress. She rolled her shoulders slowly, like a panther, dislodging it. Dark blue rippled to the floor, like parting cloud, her bright skin blazing in the firelight, like the sun rising from the sea. She peeled away her underwear, letting it fall softly at her feet. The feeling of losing the weight of her clothes rushed her. She listened eagerly. There. He’d stopped breathing. Her insides turned to velvet. 

She turned slowly, every musical catch of his breath sending another invisible tremor through her. She faced him, in nothing but her heeled boots, and saw him melt. His shoulders dropped, his jaw went slack, his brow buckled, his fingers sank into the bed, his chest expanded in a deep intake of breath. His gaze tumbled about her, completely uncontrolled. She felt like the sun again, not rising now, but hovering in space and propelling and reeling and suspending the planets with her immense, irresistible gravity. She was celestial. She was astronomical. This man was Earth, and all he could do was fall into orbit and let her bring him to life.

She took a confident step towards him.

Hector moved instinctively. He slid hastily to sit on the edge of the bed, letting the sheets leave him, his modesty forgotten as all his focus plunged into her. She slipped into the gap between his knees, eying his muscular thighs and his long, graceful limbs. She moved to stroke his face, to raise his chin and tease the collar and say something devastatingly seductive. He didn’t give her the chance. He threw his arms around her waist and buried his face in her belly and let out a long, gruff, aching moan, his breath flooding her skin. She stood surprised for a moment, then relaxed with satisfaction into his embrace. As she loosened in his arms, he wrapped her tighter, clinging to her desperately. She ran her fingers through his hair, releasing the scents of forge smoke and herbs. Her abdomen pooled with heat, as his lips began to pad around her belly button and along the line of her breastbone. Their night together months ago flashed through her mind, the way he had kissed every inch of her with meticulous sensuality. She relaxed deeper into his hold, her hips tilting. She closed her eyes and grinned, as she felt his lips match her movement and slip down to below her belly button. He kissed infuriatingly along the sensitive crescent base of her belly.

“Mmmm,” she sighed, “this is nice to come home to.”

His kisses sank again. The silk of his lips ghosted over her clit. Another flash of memory. She curled her fingers into his hair. He sighed, with the hint of a whimper.

“You know why I never showed real gratitude for the meals you bring me?” he murmured, his hands splaying on her lower back. “Because nothing tasted of anything after I tasted you. I thought I could go without tasting you again. Idiot. Might as well cut out my tongue.” And he drew a long, deep lap along her clit.


	7. Celestial

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You've waited six chapters, it's SMUT TIME! 
> 
> Under the stars, out in the mountain air, Lenore and Hector reunite. And Hector is a very good boy.

Pleasure flashed through Lenore. She bit her tongue and threw her head back, letting Hector's embrace around her waist take her weight. 

Hector’s tongue began to circle slowly, carefully refinding the routes of sensation from their first night, too long ago. Every motion he made resounded in her body. He was gentle and tentative, but he was thorough, writhing his tongue slow and deep. She gazed beyond him to the expanse of night behind the gossamer veil over her window. Her eyes filled with stars and moonbeams. She smiled. Pleasure built quickly in her clit, trickling to her legs and up her spine. She bit her lip and pulled him away by his hair, rolling a shiver out of her shoulders. 

He nestled his head into her palm, looking up at her with a still puckered mouth. “Should I not?”

She chuckled and teased his scalp with her fingertips, delighting at how he wriggled in his seat. She beamed, her sharp canines glinting. An idea struck her. She swept away and hurried to her white, fur cloak and scooped it up. She tripped back to him and snatched up the end of his lead. He gasped prettily, as she pulled him to stand and over to the long window. She hooked the lead on her wrist, brushed back the curtain, and opened the great glass panels. Bracing air whisked over them, her skin coming almost violently to life. She pulled Hector out onto the balcony.

“What are you doing?” he whispered anxiously, holding back.

She turned, putting the night behind her, like vast wings. She gave the lead a sharp tug. He stumbled out into the cold and shivered. She rubbed his arm and grinned at him, then spread the cloak on the broad stone railing of the balcony, arranging it so it fell down onto the floor and spread like cream. She guided him to the cloak, hopped onto the railing, and spread her legs wide, burying her fingers in the fur to secure herself. Hector’s eyes widened. He stared for a long, fascinated moment at her reddening flesh, the cold pricking his shoulders and nipples and knees pink. She eyed his swelling cock, his trembling lip, the way his hands furled and unfurled at his sides. 

She tugged the lead again.

In one fluid motion, he stumbled forward, dropped like a puppet to his knees on the fur, and dove between her thighs. His mouth pressed over her pussy, rushing her with heat and a relief so intense it gripped her nerves. Hector husked a moan and fidgeted on the fur, trying to position himself without having to take his tongue away. He hooked his arms under her thighs, resting them on his shoulders and kneading her muscle with his large, dextrous hands. He sank into her, like melting snow. 

Lenore gasped with pleasure, taking a deep draught of the icy, invigorating night. She crossed her ankles on his back and clasped him with her legs, caging him in her body. He pressed deeper, his tongue scooping into her folds and sending an electric pulse into her bloodstream that almost restarted her heart. She tipped backwards on the ledge, the stars wheeling overhead. She clutched the lead and caught herself. The buckle clinked. Hector jolted and sucked in through his teeth. He closed her thighs harder in his hands. He shut his eyes tight and plunged into her. 

Lenore released a long, low moan that sang around the breeze. Hector’s lips ground on her labia, massaging her slow-moving blood into her pussy, so she swelled into his mouth like ripening fruit. His tongue looped and dove, like the red thread winding through Minos’ labyrinth. His taut reservedness fled him, his young, impulsive, greedy hunger meeting her own ancient, devouring appetite. He ate like it was a feast day. His musical moans and tiny, helpless whines bobbed staccato up to her and flicked satisfied smiles over her lips. 

“Pleasure yourself, Pet,” she whispered.

One hand slipped from her thigh and vanished. His moans roughened, deepened, reverberating through her bones. His tongue found a maddening rhythm that matched his eager strokes on his hard cock. Her keen senses could pick out every nuanced note of his desire in the air, the song of his breath, the tension of his muscles, the salt of his sweat even in the cold. She poked her tongue between her lips. She could almost taste his skin, the tang of his cock and the sweetness of his mouth. 

He flickered his tongue light and fast. She squeaked in her throat and reeled, clamping his head between her thighs and willingly leaning back into the night. She hung from the lead, pulling taut and dragging a choked groan from him. 

“Are you alright?” she asked softly.

His tongue eased from her, the dripping humidity between his mouth and her pussy tingling tortuously. His breathless reply buzzed in her wet flesh. “Yes. You were right. This is what I always really needed.” He broke his kneading on his cock, reached up around her thigh and gripped the lead, running his fist up it. She bent to kiss his hand. He sighed like bellows at the touch of her lips. He darted his hand back to his cock, and redoubled his attention to her pleasure. 

Sensation whirled up her body, almost carrying her away on the brisk mountain air. She gripped the fur beneath her with one hand and the lead with the other. She streamed into the starlight, the spray of sparkle dazzling her, as she let herself fly through the night. The cold kissed her nipples and her neck and down her back, clashing with the blazing forge-heat of Hector. 

As she surrendered to the starlight, he surrendered to her. She could feel it in the movement of his body between her legs, in the delving and lashing and lapping of his tongue. All his defences disintegrated and he gave into the fresh, renewing night and the darkness enclosed in her body. It fuelled her. He was pouring power into her. She leaned back and hung from the lead and felt his strength anchor her to the balcony, felt him seize up with the effort of taking her weight, felt him moan longingly to be tested further. Centuries of being diminished - Little Lenore, the peace-maker, the pretty thing, the romantic - crumbled away. 

She pushed her hips forward and began to ride his tongue, like she was taming a wild horse. She threw all her strength into her flowing thrusts, summoning his tongue deeper, his moans hotter. Her skin slipped on the soft fur, her gaze gliding through the mist and crystal galaxies. She fucked his mouth, dragging the heavy heels of her boots over his back. She laughed into the sky at the waves of shudders and moans that shattered through him.

“Hector, Oh…” She sucked in through her teeth, rasping a command over a spike of pleasure. “Say it.”

Hector gurgled from where he was submerged in her surging flesh. He gulped, pulling back the tiniest fraction, and panted against her pounding clit. “Say it?”

“Say you belong to me,” Lenore sighed, winding the lead around her hand to link them tightly, until it cut into her palm. “Please, Hector.” She knew her need undid him. The raw power of fucking his open, willing mouth was delicious, but the way he came apart at her soft, caressing desires was truly intoxicating.

He shuddered and whimpered, sending a thrill of vibrations into her soaked, sensitised pussy. Her cunt ached, her clit sang. He pressed his steamy brow to her abdomen and gulped for air, his fingertips pressing hard into her thigh, his shoulder rolling under her other thigh with the motion of his hand ceaselessly pumping his cock. 

“Lenore…” he breathed, “I belong to you.”

Her pristine face broke into a smile that flung the stars apart. “Prove your loyalty.”

“Oh God…” He whined like a wolf and collapsed into her pleasure. 

His tongue was zealous now. He licked her in rapid circles. He smeared scalding trails between her flushed labia and sucked on her clit like it was sugar-coated. He kissed her and scorched her with his breath. The pleasure built in her body, like steam in an underground spring, pressing on her insides, until she could almost feel cracks appearing in her marble skin. She moaned sonorously and let a rush of wind snatch her voice away. She gasped for breath and thrust faster into his mouth, sweat beading on her back and turning to ice crystals in the cold. 

The fur clung to her seat, the leather bit her hand. The intense, all-consuming desire for release galloped in her veins. The only thing keeping her on earth was the thick leather link between her and her devoted, delightful pet. The brilliant joy of his submission swirled into the dizzying sensations in her body, taking her higher and higher and higher. The mountains were beneath her. The snowfall was beneath her. 

She was celestial. 

“Lenore…” His tongue rescinded a moment and left her suspended in the thrilling silence of the night. In the echoing, secretive quiet, she just caught his whisper into her body. “I mean it. I belong to you.”

He kissed her clit.

And took her over the edge. 

She reeled backwards, crying out, lurching to grasp his hair and collar, as the ledge spun beneath her. The world spun. The ground yawned far below and the stars stampeded over her wide, gaping eyes. Heat spiralled up her core and burst on her skin, defying the cold. Her release undid the order of the planets, down was up, night was dazzlingly bright, gravity couldn’t hold her. 

But Hector could. 

As she bucked and spasmed, careening over the balcony edge, he launched up from his crumpled state and cast his arms about her waist. He clung to her fiercely, crushing kisses into the tender undersides of her breasts, his collar pressing into her belly. 

The heavens gradually stilled, calming to a soft, exhilarated twinkling. Lenore put her hand to her face and let a final quiver of pleasure skip through her. Hector was trembling against her, wrapping her so tight it pushed on her ribs. She grinned. 

She scrunched his hair into her hand and twisted. He hissed and moaned. She wriggled and kicked him hard on the chest. He yelped and tumbled onto his back, skidding on the frosted stone floor of the balcony. His face and chest were the colour of terracotta, his cock was desperately thick and glistening at the tip, twitching with every cruel kiss of cold air. He stared up at her, bewildered and helpless and pleading, his hand flexing needily. She leaned on one palm, kicked one ankle over the other, and nodded. 

Hector groaned in relief, his spine arching. He seized his cock and pumped himself rapidly, filling the air with the tapping of his flesh and the salt of his desire. He took seconds to finish, a jet of pearls catching the moonlight and showering his chest. He let out a long, reverberating moan. He lay shivering on the hard stone, the soles of his feet glistening with frost, his muscles jutting in the cold, his eyes rolling under the lids.

Lenore ran her fingertips over her lip and gazed at his ruined, ragged form in satisfaction. She hopped delicately from the balcony and stepped to stand over him, her boots clacking on the stone. She dipped her heel into the puddle of snowy shine on his chest and hovered it over his mouth, glaring down at him in mock challenge. He blinked his eyes open and cocked an eyebrow. He nudged his head forward and sucked her heel clean, holding her eye. She drew the heel down his chest, leaving a light score mark, and dipped her toe into the loop handle of the lead. She smiled at him. He stroked her foot and the ring of leather. 

He smiled back.

*

They sat curled up together in the cloak on the balcony, looking up at the stars. Lenore tucked into Hector’s heat, leaning against his chest, the cloak drooping off one of his angular shoulders and giving him the look of an artist’s model. She was cuddled into the fur, like a crocus under a blanket of snow. 

Hector gazed down at her, his body and mind the quietest they’d been in as long as he could remember. Cezar lay at their feet, snoring bluntly. Hector reached out and mussed his ears. He couldn’t believe he had him back. He couldn’t believe he had someone in his life who would do this for him. 

Lenore tossed her hand behind her to his broad, warm chest and lazily stroked his lead, her fingers travelling up to caress the collar. The pressure of her touch leaked through the leather, pleasant and cradling. He dropped his head in a silent plea for her to stroke his hair. She obliged, petting around the back of his neck and up into the roots. The sweetness of it trickled down his body. He scooped her closer in his arms and sank his brow to her shoulder, nestling into her scent and her stillness. She kept petting his hair, the tender sensation keeping his mind clear and his body relaxed.

Cezar sorted and wheezed, rolling over in his sleep with a rattle of bones. Hector peeked out from Lenore’s hair and chuckled at him. Lights caught his eye. He looked back up into the ocean of stars glistening above them, parading over the mountains and falling on the snow and the castle, like magic. The ethereal vastness of it was chilling, the same macabre beauty he saw in his night creatures. In Lenore.

“This is what it means, you know.” Her low, lilting voice stroked him alert.

“What?” he asked, a little thickly.

She was still tracing her fingertips between the collar and his hair. “Being a pet.” She kept looking up at the stars, reflected in the deep, black pools of her pupils. “This is the heart of it. Just being together, in the ease of it. It’s easier to be around pets than anyone else, don’t you think?”

He glanced at the snoring Cezar and kissed her temple. “It is.”

“I like how easy it feels to be around you, Hector,” Lenore said, the poetic quality she gave his name thrumming in his chest. “When you’re not being intentionally difficult, that is.” She elbowed him softly.

He chuckled and hugged her close against his torso, replying muffled into her hair. “I don’t want to be difficult anymore. I don’t want anything to be difficult for you, ever again.”

He felt her pleased sigh leave her body, it lifted his heart. The moonlit curve of her bare shoulders and breasts just under the cloak taunted his eye. He wrenched his gaze back up to the sky, and was met by a piercing white diamond, brighter than any other star in the indigo expanse, hanging like a collar gem from the throat of Canis Major. Sirius, the Dog Star. He bit his lip and blushed.

Lenore found his hand under the cloak. She squeezed it, then guided it down and laid it over the folds of her pussy. Her softness felled him. His fingers slid immediately in the wetness. He began to massage her gently. She hummed and tipped her head back onto his shoulder, her parted, autumn lips an inch from his. Their eyes met, ruby and opal.

They kissed. 

They hadn’t kissed since that night. Having her lips on his again was a balm against all the pain of the last few months. Her kiss was tender, but possessive. She nipped at his lower lip and danced her tongue on his, sucked the assertiveness out of him, so he was forced to match her and kiss her deeply. Everything demanded surrender with Lenore, even something as simple as this. He deepened his touch on her clit. Her soft moan into his mouth jumpstarted his pulse again. 

She tugged from his mouth with a final nibble at his lip, making him chuckle under his breath. She caught his eye and gazed irresistibly into his face, her blood-glisten eyes enrapturing. 

She murmured with a subtle note of command, “Please me again.”

He dissolved utterly into her voice. He pecked her lips and nodded.

She reached up behind her and ran her hand firmly along the collar, its weight pinning him to her, holding his heating body together. She reclined back against him and spread her legs for his hand. Her hair gushed over the cloak. Her eyes teamed with the cacophony of starlight.

She twisted a lock of his hair around her finger and smiled into the night. 

“Good Boy.”


End file.
